


don't listen in secret

by pumpkibum



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26530942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pumpkibum/pseuds/pumpkibum
Summary: if you can hear my heart, can't you come back to me?written for snapshots challenge 2: betrayal
Relationships: Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26
Collections: Challenge 2: Betrayal





	don't listen in secret

Seungcheol hasn’t left his room for the past two weeks. 

His brothers try to ease him out. They sit with him, they talk to him as though he’s listening, they leave plates of food by his bed and convince him to _please take a bite, hyung, you need to eat._

They try their best, but they don’t understand.

They don’t know what it’s like to lose someone.

His parents and his elder relatives scoff at him. They call him overdramatic and say things like “Seungcheol, you never really loved him. You knew this was going to happen. Get over yourself.”

_They_ think what happened that night was a good thing, something worth celebrating. Something that was _meant_ to be done. 

You could argue that they’re evil for thinking that, but Seungcheol thinks it’s just a misunderstanding. A very unfair misunderstanding.

-

He doesn’t remember much from that night. His brother Hansol tells him it’s how his brain is coping with the trauma and grief, blocking out the painful memory so that he can survive.

All he knows is that he didn’t even cry. Instead, he came home and slept for hours, and hours, and hours. 

-

Sometimes, Seungcheol thinks he sees his ghost. 

His mother rolls her eyes at him, says “Don’t be ridiculous, Seungcheol, ghosts aren’t real. We would know.”

But that doesn’t explain the figure that stands in his room, the one Seungcheol can see out of the corner of his eye while he’s laying in bed and staring up at the ceiling, waiting, _begging_ for the noise in his brain to stop.

_He’s_ there.

Just standing, with light hair, and tear-stained eyes, asking if everything was a lie, if their time together meant absolutely nothing.

_(It meant the world to me, Jeonghan, I’m-)_

He doesn’t finish that thought. He thinks that Jeonghan, even in death, deserves more than false words and empty promises.

-

_“I can hear your heartbeat,” Jeonghan giggles from where his head rests against Seungcheol’s chest. “It’s comforting.”_

_Seungcheol smiles and threads his finger through Jeonghan’s hair. “It’s for you,” he whispers. “It sings for you. Can you hear it?”_

_“I can,” Jeonghan whispers back, and leans up to kiss him._

_He smells like the air right after it has rained, and he tastes like fresh mint leaves._

-

When a month passes, Seungcheol leaves his home to go on long walks, late at night.

He often visits the lake. He doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s grief, maybe it’s guilt, maybe he’s just trying to hold on to the last bit of Jeonghan he has. 

If he could turn back time, he would have never met him. He would’ve told someone else to pick up Chan’s favorite bread from the bakery at the end of the street. That way, he wouldn’t have bumped into _him_ , wouldn’t have gone breathless when he saw him for the first time.

He wouldn’t have fallen in love.

He wished it wasn’t him. He didn’t mean for it to be him. 

-

He doesn’t think about the gun.

It sits in a wooden box with his family crest engraved on the top, buried in the deepest drawer of his dresser. It’s a simple pistol, with five pure silver bullets still in its barrel.

It’s funny, because prior to that night, Seungcheol didn’t even think he’d be able to leave the house without it. That pistol has been with him since he was a child, passed down from his father. Seungcheol trained with that gun, took it out one too many afternoons for target practice with his brothers. 

He considered it as a friend, another limb, something he could never part from.

Now, he can’t even look at it without feeling sick.

-

The nightmares plague him. Too often he’ll find himself waking up in a cold sweat with tears in his eyes and a cry at his lips. A name, a plea.

He sees _him_ every time, crying with a hole in his chest, asking, “Can’t you hear me?”

Seungcheol can. He can always hear him, he always listens, but only in secret because he is so _fucking_ ashamed and so _fucking_ guilty. 

_We call them monsters..._ but as Seungcheol remembers the blood on his hands and the wailing in his ears, he can’t help but ask _what are we? How are we any different?_

-

Seungcheol comes back to the lake.

_(Jeonghan wraps his arms around Seungcheol’s shoulders and pulls him close. Seungcheol holds him tightly and presses a kiss into his hair.)_

He collapses on his knees in front of the water.

_(They pull apart. “Close your eyes,” Seungcheol whispers shakily. “I have a surprise for you.” He lets Jeonghan go and takes a few steps back. Jeonghan keeps his eyes closed.)_

“I love you!” Seungcheol shouts into the darkness.

_(“I love you too,” Jeonghan says, amused. Seungcheol stifles a sob. Jeonghan opens his eyes at the noise, and he sees it. “What-”)_

He cries.

_(“I’m so sorry,” and then, the bang of a gunshot.)_

Seungcheol hears his voice. A whisper, so soft. 

_(His cousins come out from the bushes and cheer. Vampires are now extinct.)_

“Come back.”

And Seungcheol does.

-

Yoon Jeonghan was the loneliest vampire in the world, and he was the last one, too.

Alive for approximately three hundred years, many people have passed through his life. Friends, lovers, companions. Too many times has he ripped out his still heart and offered it to someone on a silver platter.

He thinks about his first lover, Mingyu, who died in his arms because Jeonghan failed to turn him. He thinks about Jihoon, Seokmin, and Seungkwan, humans he came to love like they were his own family, who lived long happy lives before they withered away from old age.

And he thinks about Jisoo, who shoved him into a carriage and told him to run when hunters ambushed their manor, armed with silver bullets and holy water.

No more, he tells himself.

And then, one hundred and fifty-two years later, he meets Seungcheol.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5SJI8aSSsg


End file.
